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Family day care gives job options to refugee women

ELEANOR HALL: For many refugees in Australia, getting a job can be difficult.

One Somali refugee has now tried to address that by setting up a family day care program in Sydney's west to provide refugee women with training and skills to work in child care.

The scheme now employs more than 100 people.

Our reporter Miriam Hall spent a morning with some of the women who are a part of the program.

(Children singing)

MIRIAM HALL: Each day at her home at one of Sydney's outer suburbs, Deborah Guerin cares for seven children.

DEBORAH GUERIN: I learn a lot, I improve my English a little bit and I learn how the kids in Australia and kids in our country is different.

MIRIAM HALL: Originally from Sudan, Deborah Guerin came to Australia nine years ago, but for the last 12 months she's worked as a child-carer.

DEBORAH GUERIN: In Sudan we've got war from south Sudan and northern Sudan, yeah that's why we moved from Sudan to Kenya and then in Kenya it's still worse because there is no Medicare, no is good to school. Yeah that's why I decided to come to Australia.

MIRIAM HALL: Deborah Guerin is just one of more than 100 women who work as educators in a scheme called Amazing Family Day Care. It's a program that was set by Deeqo Omar.

DEEQO OMAR: I cannot imagine anyone else being better at protecting their children than refugee women. They know how to do and what to do and they feel confident and comfortable about it.

MIRIAM HALL: Deeqo Omar was once a refugee from Somalia, and has spent the past decade as a community worker, counselling women who have been traumatised by war. Many of the women she worked with didn't have jobs.

Her program supports women to get the skills and training they need to run their own family day care business.

DEEQO OMAR: Isolation is one of the biggest challenge, the majority of them cannot speak or they are learning English and they also have that issue of culture.

So this opportunity or this project has created the easiness, where they combined what is their culture, that they feel comfortable or they feel safe and our regulation here, which is to guide them.

MIRIAM HALL: Each person who becomes a family day-carer is helped through a certificate three in childcare and their first aid accreditation. They are also helped through child protection courses and police checks.

Theresa Ganner is the centre cocoordinator, and is constantly impressed by what the women achieve.

THERESA GANNER: They have surprised me, I'm learning every day from these women - their strength, their caring nature, their positive attitude.

MIRIAM HALL: Theresa Ganner says many of the women who work as family day carers had little chance of getting work otherwise. She says the women just needed formal training to improve on their innate abilities.

THERESA GANNER: They have children, they have a lot of children, and their number one priority has always been survival, it's always been to put food in the children's mouth before themselves and we just sort of nurture from there upwards.

MIRIAM HALL: Every fortnight, the program runs a play group where the carers bring their children.

Tabitha Ajack is a field support officer.

TABITHA AJACK: You need to work for a living, you know, everything is - it's not that you sit at home, not working, you need to work so that you have life, support your family, support your children.

MIRIAM HALL: For Deeqo Omar, the results of her work in small developments.

DEEQO OMAR: Things that are very simple that we take as granted, they didn't have it. Now it is possible that they have that confidence to go out and say listen, I am a taxpayer, I am a part of Australian society, I am not only a refugee, I was once a while ago, but not anymore.

I am a person who is contributing to the wellbeing of the wider society.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Deeqo Omar, who set up that family day care program, ending Miriam Hall's report.